{"id":682365,"date":"2026-05-20T17:38:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T17:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/682365\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T17:38:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T17:38:30","slug":"meet-the-sifted-100-southern-europes-fastest-growing-startups-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/682365\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Sifted 100: Southern Europe&#8217;s fastest-growing startups of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-block=\"p\" class=\"\">Hotiday, a Milan-based startup that sublets hotel rooms and rents them to travelers, tops the third Sifted 100: southern Europe Leaderboard \u2014 an annual ranking of the 100 fastest-growing companies in the region, in partnership with AI infrastructure company Nebius.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">In second place is Lexroom, also based in Milan. The company provides AI tools for small law firms and corporate legal teams, and <a href=\"https:\/\/sifted.eu\/articles\/investors-pile-into-legal-tech-lexroom-50m-series-b\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">raised a $50m Series B this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">Third is Barcelona-based Enginy, an AI platform to help salespeople find potential customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">The leaderboard ranks 100 companies with the strongest revenue growth over the past three financial years, calculated using a two-year revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">Founded by a trio of students in 2022, Hotiday notched a 1330.95% two-year revenue CAGR between 2023 and 2025.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">&#8220;When we started we thought, we can&#8217;t just buy buildings, and we can&#8217;t franchise the brand,&#8221; says cofounder and CEO Vittorio Gargiulo. &#8220;But we can sublet.&#8221; Sifted Pro subscribers can learn more about the startup\u2019s unusual business model here.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">Paolo Fois, cofounder and CEO of Lexroom, leads his company to a 1129.64% CAGR; Enginy, with an 889.61% CAGR, is targeting \u20ac10m annual recurring revenue by the end of the year. CEO Kai Brand is building the business the modern way: through his LinkedIn.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">An avid poster, Brand has turned his profile into a sales engine. &#8220;Building that presence has helped a lot in our outbound sales,&#8221; he says. &#8220;You build a voice on social media so customers already trust and know our products when they get a cold call.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Milan, B2B triumphs<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">For the third year in a row, business-to-business software is the top-performing vertical on the ranking with 32% of companies, slightly down from 37% in 2025 and 38% in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">Nine climate tech startups make the cut, while 13 companies are AI-native \u2014 meaning they have designed their products around the technology. Lexroom is the top-ranked among them.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">The majority of the ranked companies (27) are based in Milan. Barcelona is home to 14 startups, and Madrid seven.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">Six companies in the top 100 have already raised funding in 2026. Of those, Lexroom has raised the biggest amount.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">The 10 fastest-growing startups in southern Europe in 2026:<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">1\/ Hotiday: Hotel booking site<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">2\/ Lexroom: AI tools for lawyers<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">3\/ Enginy: AI-powered sales platform<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">4\/ Jet HR: Payroll and HR software\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">5\/ reveni: E-commerce software to help manage returns<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">6\/ Plannix: Financial advisory platform\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">7\/ toduba: Software to manage meal vouchers and gift cards\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">8\/ Embat: AI tools for chief financial officers\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">9\/ qomodo: Buy now, pay later tool for Italy\u2019s main-street retailers<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">10\/ e-motion: EV charging hardware<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sifted.eu\/intelligence\/reports\/sifted-100-southern-europe-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">View the full, digital version of the leaderboard here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>How the 100 were chosen<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">To be eligible, companies had to meet the following criteria:<\/p>\n<p>Private and independent<br \/>\nHeadquartered in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, San Marino or Andorra<br \/>\nFounded no earlier than 2010<br \/>\nMajority of revenue must be generated by proprietary technology<br \/>\nAt least three years of revenue data, either between 2022-2024, 2023-2025 or 2024-2026 depending on filing dates, across comparable accounting periods of at least 26 weeks<br \/>\nRevenue (annualised if necessary) of at least \u20ac10k in the base year (2022, 2023 or 2024) and at least \u20ac100k in the most recent financial year (2024, 2025 or 2026)<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">Research was conducted by the Sifted Intelligence team to identify and contact relevant, high-growth startups. Applications were accepted on the Sifted website from January 1 to May 8, 2026.<\/p>\n<p data-block=\"p\">Companies were required to submit relevant, signed documentation to support financial information disclosed to Sifted. Some companies chose to keep some of this information private.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hotiday, a Milan-based startup that sublets hotel rooms and rents them to travelers, tops the third Sifted 100:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,49,48,137],"class_list":["post-682365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entrepreneurship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}